Assessment of the OTC (Outdoor Thermal Comfort) in the UAEU Campus, AL Ain, Abu Dhabi, UAE

The speed of urban growth in the city of Al Ain brings out a great challenge for all the professionals involved in the design, planning and construction of buildings and other urban structures. Al Ain has a hot arid climate with fresh winter and very hot and dry summer. The main focus of this research is the outdoor thermal comfort of the male and female campuses of the United Arab Emirates University. The campus is located in the entrance of the city of Al Ain, therefore the study of the materials in the built environment is crucial. The outdoor thermal comfort (in this research represented by PET) is an important parameter to measure the quality of life in a developing city such as Al Ain and within the campus in particular. The main sub-domains of the CFD (Computational Fluid Dynamics) models are: zone A (currently with high metallic shading structure), zone B (no shading devices), zone C (currently with high metallic shading structure), zone D1 (no shading devices), zone D2 (no shading devices). The suggested selection of these five zones is based on the high number of users. The site measurement campaign includes the installation of a range of sensors (air temperature, relative humidity, wind speed and direction, direct normal and global horizontal solar irradiance) that will monitor the microclimatic conditions to be used as boundary conditions in the CFD simulations done in ENVI-met software. By comparing the current situation with the proposed new strategies this study aims to bring an innovative alternative in improving the OTC.